bookstores

Bookstore Review: Bookends & Beginnings

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Bookends and Beginnings interiorOn my mini-bookstore crawl in Evanston, I also came across a listing for Bookends & Beginnings, located in the legendary location of Bookman’s Alley. I became even more intrigued when I walked past a big B & N store and discovered they were located the next block north on Sherman — literally in an alley off the main street. As I approached, I found what looked like a very modest storefront and thought, this will be a quick visit.

Wrong. I walked in and discovered a store four or five times bigger than I expected, kind of like the stable in The Last Battle (or the TARDIS in Dr. Who) that was bigger on the inside than the outside. And even more surprising in the shadow of B & N, this store sells new books, ranging from serious literature and non-fiction to a section on the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field (hey, the Cubs are in the playoffs as I write!).

Book RecommendationOne of the most delightful things you won’t find in that big chain bookstore are handwritten reviews by bookstore staff underneath books throughout the store. For example under The Book of Strange New Beginnings by Michel Faber, I found:

“I usually don’t like futuristic novels, especially ones about a criminal who becomes a true believer. However this book was a wonderful engrossing read from first page to last.”

I don’t usually read YA fiction, but this succinct review intrigued me–not enough to buy the book–yet.

Children's BooksIn the back of the store, off to the left is a delightful children’s corner, complete with lots of stuffed animals and comfortable places to sit and look at books. Jeff Garrett, one of the partners in this enterprise considers this his pride and joy. The children’s section stocks books in 26 languages. In a former life, Jeff was a librarian, specializing in rare and specialized collections, 18th and 19th century German and Austrian library history, and global children’s literature. The store’s website says, ” He served twice (2004 and 2006) as president of the Hans Christian Andersen awards jury of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY).”

Nina Barrett is owner and business manager for the store (and married to Jeff–no typo). Nina has published three books, acquired a professional chef’s degree, worked as a food reporter, and won two James Beard awards, a major award in the world of cooking and food. Needless to stay, the store also features a “rich selection of food-related books.”

A Bookselling TraditionI mentioned Bookman’s Alley. From 1980 to 2013, Roger Carlson was one of the premier booksellers in Evanston. When Nina and Jeff took over this site, they did not take over the books from the former store. My sense is that there is a rich history of bookselling in this location but Jeff and Nina have put their own distinct imprint on the bookseller’s trade.

The store is a beehive of literary and cultural activity. For example, today (October 13, 2015) there is a workshop on the art and craft of memoir with Dina Elenbogen, an Evanston History Walk, and a literary salon on “Ta-Nehisi Coates and the topic of race in “Post-Racial” America”. The store regularly features author readings. You can also sign up for a newsletter and emails to keep in touch with bookstore events, staff picks, and more.

This is a store for the whole family–children, teens, and adults of widely varied reading interests. The store also sells a distinct selection of cards, papers, notebooks, toys, jewelry and more. That big chain store down the street is cavernous, and just like the ones in my home town. Bookends & Beginnings was a far more intimate, personal space that continues a long history of bookselling in the heart of Evanston.

Contact info and hours:

1712 Sherman Avenue, Alley #1, Evanston, IL 60201, 224-999-7722,  INFO@BOOKENDSANDBEGINNINGS.COM

Tuesday through Saturday 10 – 7, Sunday and Monday 10 – 6

Bookstore Review: The Bookstore at Vineyard Columbus

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
The Bookstore at Vineyard Columbus

The Bookstore at Vineyard Columbus

I visited an unusual bookstore the other day. It was located inside the campus of Vineyard Columbus, located at 6000 Cooper Road in Westerville. Roughly 8,000 people attend services at this church each weekend and The Bookstore is located just inside one of the main entrances off of the south side of the building.

Jeff Baker, the Bookstore Ministry Coordinator sat down with me and explained the mission of this bookstore and some of the strategies they pursue to encourage reading as part of the efforts of this church to disciple people toward Christian maturity. Very early in the church’s life, in the late 1980’s, they established a booktable to sell books to equip their congregation. This morphed into The Bookstore when they moved into their current location and Jeff has served as Coordinator since 1998,

Jeff Baker, Bookstore Ministry Coordinator

Jeff Baker, Bookstore Ministry Coordinator

Jeff described his passion as one for using books to help equip believers for growth and transformation. One of strategies he, and bookstore clerk, Meg Kuta (who formerly worked with a major bookstore chain) work on is finding “entry level” books that they can sell at prices as low as $5.00 a copy that are easy reads but have quality content that appeal to the non-reader, which he estimates might make up 80 percent of the congregation (pretty much what is true of the general adult population). He gave shout-outs to Zondervan/Harper-Collins and Tyndale who are publishing a number of titles in this vein.

20150929_140036

Gifts, Theology, and Children’s Books!

At the same time, as I looked around the store, I was impressed with the quality content available and the amount of the store given over to books as opposed to gift items, stationary, cards, and other non-book items. You can find meaty Bible study tools, theology texts. serious biographies, like the new one on Tom Oden. There is also a delightful children’s section. The store stocks resources for small group leaders, the diverse ministries of Vineyard Columbus, and books related to current sermon themes. All Vineyard leaders are able to purchase books at a 20% discount and Jeff works with ministry leaders to find resources to enhance the efforts of each ministry.

We talked about how Jeff works with the pastors to order books that they will be mentioning in sermons. He observed that the way books are recommended in a sermon have a big effect. Recently, for example, a speaker talked about the devotional guide Search the Scriptures and wove the impact of using this guide throughout his sermon. As a result, the store sold 150 copies! More offhand recommendations may sell five or ten copies to the really interested.

Like many bookstores, The Bookstore will host author events with local authors as well as national authors visiting to speak at services or conferences hosted by the church. This coming year, they are planning to host a series of author events with local seminary professors. According to their website, they also host a writers group and a C.S. Lewis discussion group.

I asked Jeff what he most and least likes in Christian publishing. Vineyard Columbus is an ethnically diverse congregation and one pet peeve which he has engaged publishers on are books with only white people on the covers. He also has problems with the “end times prophecy” books which he feels nurtures idle speculation rather than serious discipleship.

Positively, once again he spoke warmly of the deeply discounted “entry level” books that Zondervan/Harper-Collins and Tyndale publish. He also spoke of the growing level of cooperation he is seeing among authors, publishers, publicists, and booksellers, all who have faced challenges in the changing landscape of bookselling.

Finally, we discussed some of the books that are his “bookseller’s picks”. Several times in our conversation he mentioned Gordon Fee’s Paul, The Spirit, and the People of God, a book deeply consonant with Vineyard’s theological commitments. Two other books Jeff and Meg are recommending these days are John Ortberg’s If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat and Michelle DeRusha’s 50 Women Every Christian Should Know.

While The Bookstore’s primary clientele are Vineyard members, the store is open to the public. Jeff contends that their prices are often better than you-know-who. They also have a Frequent Buyer program that offers a 10% discount on all purchases, email notices of featured books and specials and has no annual membership fee.

Their hours are as follows:

Monday Closed
Tuesday-Friday 12-5pm
Saturday 5:30-8:15pm
Sunday 8:45am-1:45pm
Additional contact information for the store and other resources including an extensive list of book recommendations by topic are available on their website.

The Allure of a Book-Lined Room

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment
A comfortable nook at Blue Jacket Books in Xenia, Ohio

A comfortable nook at Blue Jacket Books in Xenia, Ohio

I follow various book sites on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter and one thing I notice is the frequency that people post pictures of fantastic libraries, both institutional and personal, or sometimes of bookstores that look like libraries with shelves and shelves of books and comfy nooks and crannies with overstuffed chairs in abundance.

I have two hunches of why we love such images. I’d love to know what others think.

One is that such places represent a place of safety or refuge in a world that can at times feel scary. Maybe this is just me. I was in a seminar where we were asked to imagine a safe space. The image that came to mind was a book-lined room, with lots of old, leather-bound volumes, a fireplace with a good fire burning, comfortable leather chairs and good lighting, a stand at my side where I could place a mug of something warm, and reading tables or a reading desk for more serious work, looking out on a woodland or mountain vista.

So much for my fantasy life! But wouldn’t you love to spend time in a room like that? Maybe if you are a bibliophile, you’ve tried to create, with your means hopefully, a room like that. Yet the funny thing is, that all I need really is the book! I can be in an airline waiting area in a major airport with a cup of Starbucks and a book or my Kindle, and I’m in that place.

East Reading Room at Thompson Library, The Ohio State University

East Reading Room at Thompson Library, The Ohio State University

My other hunch is that these spaces represent something of our aspirations as readers. Sitting in a university reading room studying (or pretending to) a challenging work makes me feel like a scholar, or perhaps a bit wiser, whether it is really so or not! Sitting in a place where we have access to the best of what human beings have thought or written encourages us in the hope that we might gain some of that knowledge.

I’ve observed that some of my favorite bookstores try, within their means and their space, to create this feel. They allow us to slow down, to savor being around all these books. They aren’t just warehousing books. They are welcoming those who read them. I’ve found others, particularly those selling used books that simply pack as many books in as possible. There’s no place to sit to skim a book or read a chapter to see if it is what you are looking for. I’ve found some great books in these places but they aren’t places where I want to linger. That can be mitigated somewhat by a friendly bookseller who is appropriately helpful and enjoys talking about books.

Maybe another word for all of this is that these places, whether mental images or real places, represent places of retreat. They are places where we come away and have the safety to reflect and be renewed. At one time, we might have turned more to religious places, and some of us still do. (I’ve found some of the best retreat centers even have spaces like this!). It makes me wonder whether such imagery, and the real places that approximate this, as good as they are, point us to something more, just as the books we read often do.

National Read a Book Day

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

weird-and-wackybooksI don’t usually do posts on Sundays, but just wanted to highlight that today (September 6) is National Read a Book Day! I don’t know who thinks these things up, but I like the idea! (Of course, for some of us, every day is “read a book day”!)

Some thoughts that came to me of how to celebrate National Read a Book Day:

  1. Visit the library with your family and everyone pick out a book to read.
  2. Check your local paper for any authors doing readings of their books–usually at a local book store.
  3. Find out what your friends thought was their best “summer read”. Some good wine and cheese is always a nice accompaniment. You might get an idea of something you’d like.
  4. If you are traveling over the Labor Day weekend, get or download a recorded book to listen to in the car.
  5. Or go low tech and take turns reading to each other in the car. No DWR (driving while reading)!
  6. Visit your “to be read” pile and pull out something that has been sitting there a while and read ten pages and decide if it should stay on the pile, get promoted, or discarded.
  7. Cozy up in a hammock or comfortable outdoor chair with a cold drink and enjoy a late summer afternoon read (and maybe a nap–just don’t get sunburned!).
  8. Pick a book that can be read at a sitting and read it. My reading of most books is broken up. Sometimes it is nice to get the sense of the whole book in one sitting.
  9. Pull out one of your favorite books of all time that you haven’t read in the last five years and revisit an old friend.
  10. And above all, READ something you can enjoy. I think that’s the idea after all.

What ideas do you have for celebrating National Read a Book Day?

Bugs and Bookstores

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Kleenex-small-boxJust read a ShelfTalker piece from Publishers Weekly about the challenges of staying healthy if you are a bookseller. Let’s just say that it is not easy when one works with the public all day to stay healthy during cold and flu season. The writer talks about parents who stop at the store with obviously sick kids to pick up books, on the way to the pediatrician. Handling cash and credit cards of those who may not have coughed into their elbows is a recipe for time off.

I suppose there is no way we are ever going to have perfectly germ-free environments no matter how many “safe sneezing and coughing” videos we watch and how many hand sanitizers and sprays we use. What you would hope for instead is some common sense and courtesy. The truth is that booksellers aren’t the only ones affected. Cafe workers have to handle germy cups and plates. Other customers may handle books or other articles a sick person has touched including door handles. In our go-go culture we’ve been trained to do just that until we are laid out, sick as a dog, sick.

Instead of passing along sickness to the fellow bibliophiles, here are a few thoughts:

  • This is a great time to catch up on reading the books you have. Take that cold or flu medicine, get into your jammies, get a cup of hot tea, and snuggle up with a good book.
  • Need books? Here is where an e-reader is really helpful. You can borrow them from the library or buy them online without putting a single person at risk.
  • There are also many sources of free books such as Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, and a number of free Kindle books on Amazon, and other online sources that you can read on a tablet or computer.
  • That’s not possible? You can reserve books online at your library and pick them up with minimal contact, particularly if you have self-checkout. Can the books carry microbes? It’s possible but most die within hours or days in a dry environment. Maybe if your kids are sick, you can make sure they use hand sanitizers and wait three days before returning the books.
  • You can put a call out on Facebook to your friends that you are desperate for books. Let them know your favorite types. And maybe they can bring some chicken soup as well. If not, the books are a good substitute!

Many of us develop good relationships with our booksellers. They are our friends. If they work at an indie store, it is not always easy for them to take time off if they get sick.

Love thy bookseller as thyself!

Cold Weather — The Book Lover’s Friend

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment

In our patch of the world, the weather forecasts for the next week are downright chilly and our weather man even used the dreaded “polar vortex” phrase last night. It occurred to me that for the book lover, this is not such a bad thing:

1. I can feel good about not doing yard work when sleet is flying! No one else is out there either.

2. For the same reason, it is a good time to prowl your favorite book store. The ones that serve hot coffee or tea or cocoa are especially nice.

3. Or maybe it’s time to check out the latest additions to your local library. Ours even has a fireplace!

4. It’s a great time to catch up on those reviews and book lists for new ideas of books you’d like to read.

5. If you feel the need to do something that is considered household work, this is a great time to cull your own personal library and donate or sell those books.

6. Christmas is not too far off and it can be fun to think about the books you might give a literary friend!

7. If you log your books on Goodreads, LibraryThing, or a similar site, it is a great time to catch up on these entries and let your friends know what you’ve been reading.

8. Don’t forget, as Winston Churchill famously counselled, to “fondle” your books! Look through your shelves, open up something you’ve wanted to read some day and skim through some sections just to get a good sense of why you might still want to read that book, or not!

9. Of course, this is a great chance to catch up on past posts from Bob on Books (had to get a promo in somewhere!). A great place to start are my “The Month in Reviews”  posts which I do at the beginning of each month of books I reviewed the previous month.

10. Last of course, and what we’ve all been waiting for, is that this is the chance to snuggle up in that comfortable chair, with comfy shoes or slippers, a warm drink, and that book that will transport us into book lover bliss!

So when everyone is bemoaning the arrival of chilly weather or, as people in my city do, go bezonkers at the sight of a snow flake, you can quietly smile to yourself and think of the good book just waiting for you!

Book Store Creeps!

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

Have you ever had an encounter with a book store creep? It could be that we go to book stores often enough that we’ve had more chances to have this problem. I say we, here, because my wife tends to have these encounters more often than I, and usually, but not always with men who are acting creepily. I guess book stores are not exempt from this type of behavior. Here are some kinds we have encountered:

The Hit-man. This is the guy (usually a guy) who is trying to hit on women and mistakes the book store for a bar, or perhaps just isn’t the kind who frequents the bar. What is weird is that my wife and I are not young. Usually I will discover this has happened when my wife suddenly starts shadowing me in the store–our interests are relatively dissimilar, so when this happens I know something is up. These people need to find books on appropriate boundaries and cultivating healthy relationships!

The Overly-Familiar. This person may be trying to hit on you, but more often, they are just needy. Usually they will make some remark to get your attention and if you respond, suddenly, they are your new best friend and start telling you about their break-ups with significant others, their medical problems, the stuff that is broken down in their house, their economic woes and on and on (and on). Often leaving the store–or feigning a sudden need to use the facilities is the only way to get away.

The Invader. This is the person who simply pushes in front of you without even an “excuse me” or “pardon me” or a “there is something I was looking for in this section.” The only solution is to stay up close to the books you are looking at, which you usually think of too late. Mostly, I just conclude that tangling with such types is kind of like taking on the person who cuts you off in traffic–perilous to say the least.

The Camper. That’s the person who sits down in a chair, or on the floor and just occupies the very set of shelves you were hoping to look at and is utterly impervious to those social cues that you might actually like to look at the books in that area. Often, I’ll take off for a while and look at other things and come back. If they still don’t get the message, they are definitely a camper whose motto is “possession is 9/10ths of the law”.

The Flatulator. This last type is becoming increasingly popular in book stores and other contexts. Have you noticed how jokes about “breaking wind” and other such conversation is no longer limited to middle school boys? Seems that the practice isn’t either. I’ve noticed two types. One is the person who just likes to satisfy the urge whenever they have it, no matter who is around. The other is the “skunk” who uses this as an offensive weapon to keep people out of their space. Usually works!

Perhaps one lesson in all this for those of us nerdy enough to hang out at book stores frequently is to ask whether we might be inadvertently slipping into some of these “creepy” behaviors. Most of us really find our enjoyment of the book store experience diminished when we encounter one of these folks. The real question is, are we becoming one of them?

What are your stories of encounters with book store creeps? And how have you dealt with them?

 

 

Read It Again Books in Grove City

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment

[This store is now closed]

I mentioned a couple of posts back our recent visit to Grove City.  One of our fun discoveries was Read It Again Books, located in Grove City’s shopping district at 4052 Broadway. This is a classic used bookstore. It is located in an old two-story home on the main street of Grove City, with every room filled with shelves and tables of books by different categories.

Read It Again Books and Gifts

Read It Again Books and Gifts

When we arrived in Grove City mid-afternoon, we found the store closed but found enough to divert us until they opened at 5 pm. The owners, Lora and Lynn, work other jobs during the daytime and so just open during the evenings on weekdays, from 5 to 8 pm, from 10-6 on Saturdays (they may be opening at 8am for the new farmers market that is starting up this Saturday) and 1-6 on Sundays.

We’re so glad we came back, not only for the cookbook of ethnic recipes from Cleveland my wife found (we lived there for nine years) and a mint condition copy of E. H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World I picked up at a very reasonable price. We also really enjoyed getting to know Lora and Lynn.

Interior - Read it Again Books & Gifts

Interior – Read it Again Books & Gifts

Lora seems to be on a first name basis with most of her customers and really makes a point of getting to know their reading interests. We saw children, teens, and adults stop in while we were there. They have a children’s room and Lora worked with a couple of the children helping them find books they would enjoy in a way that would make any children’s librarian proud. She had a book she had set aside for one of her teen customers that she thought she would like.

Lynn was involved in shelving new acquisitions and what was fun was just listening to him talk about books they acquired that he found interesting. In addition, Lynn makes hand-turned fountain pens which also are for sale at the store. These were works of art.

IMG_2163

Lucy

Of course, one can’t forget Lucy, the quintessential bookstore cat. She seemed very friendly to the children in the store and just seemed to lap up attention.

Lora claimed that this was the only used bookstore in southwest Franklin County, and from what I know, I believe she is right. What was obvious to me was that Lora and Lynn loved books, loved connecting customers with books they would enjoy and work hard to both serve their community and make a go of this business. In that, they seem to represent the best ideals of the used/indie bookstore movement. And for that, I’m only too glad to give them a shout-out!

So Who Will Help Barnes & Noble?

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

James Patterson captured a great deal of attention in the book store world as he announced his intent to give away $1 million dollars to a variety of independent bookstores. A PW Daily story chronicles the first round of these grants, totalling $267,000, given after he meticulously reviewed grant requests.

B and N

The question is, what knight in shining armor is out there to bail out bookstore giant Barnes & Noble? They just announced a 10% drop in revenues during the third quarter. They say  EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) increased from $59 to $173 million over this period, but many consider EBITDA a clever accounting ploy to dress up a balance sheet. Revenues dropped in retail (including BN.com), college, and e-book and Nook sales. Were it not for draconian cuts in the Nook division (with more reportedly to come), things would have been even worse.

This is troubling news to me. In our market (Columbus, Ohio) they are the only significant retail outlet left, apart from some small indie stores with limited selections (none near us), grocery stores marketing the bestsellers, and a healthy segment of second hand stores. We’ve often been helped by book and media sellers when we have visited their stores. Sometimes that in-person assistance is far easier than searching around online when you have an idea of what you want but don’t have a particular title you are looking for.

For so many, this is just a market and convenience driven thing. Amazon is so easy to order from when you have a good idea of what you are looking for. E-books are incredibly easy to download and nobody beats Amazon’s selection, although I’m told by many that the Nook is actually a better reading device and doesn’t confine people to the proprietary format Amazon uses. Sadly, many thought Sony’s Betamax a better video format as well.

I suspect we are at a cultural tipping point. Patterson is helping indie operators attempt to innovate to stay in business. I actually wonder if some of these will survive longer than B & N, because they will figure out how to market to, attract, and serve a loyal clientele who still enjoy hanging around physical bookstores and value the service of booksellers and will pay for that privilege. I wonder if B & N needs to take a hard look at which stores in their operation are achieving this same kind of customer loyalty and both learn from them and figure out what the demographics are that make this work.

What troubles me is what will Amazon become if they face no serious competition? What I wonder sometimes is if one of the other new media giants like Google or Apple (I’m not convinced Microsoft is nimble enough) might join forces with Barnes and Noble. Apple has actually figured out how to use brick and mortar outlets to sell its products. It scares me at the same time to write this for fear of whether they might preserve physical book stores, but in some very new iteration alien to many of us.

What I wonder above all is that in turning so much of our commerce over to the virtual world, will we lose the physical spaces that add a richness to life and exchange them for our personal caves with our electronic devices that connect us to this brave new world?

Bookstore Cats

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment

I am not a cat lover. But for some reason I found myself thinking this morning about bookstores and cats and why they go together. Of course, you will not see a cat in any of the bookstore chains.  They probably worry about liability issues. Maybe the group of people frequenting the indie bookstores where you tend to find these cats are more respectful of the cats–keeping their distance and treating them as simply another book browser.

Orinda Books in Orinda, California features their bookstore cat right on the website's home page. They welcome you to come in and pet Ginger, who is accustomed to customers. Here you see her drawing attention to a table of books for sale. Photograph by Karen Lile. Text and photo accessed at http://mentalfloss.com/article/29928/10-excellent-bookstore-cats

Orinda Books in Orinda, California features their bookstore cat right on the website’s home page. They welcome you to come in and pet Ginger, who is accustomed to customers. Here you see her drawing attention to a table of books for sale. Photograph by Karen Lile. 

Why is it that cats and bookstores go together? Maybe the question is why cats and indie bookstore operators tend to go together? Maybe independent is the common thread. Indie booksellers have always struck me as very much their “own” persons, similar to the personality of cats who seem to allow you into their lives very much on their terms, if at all.

Why do cats and books go together? Is it that we wish we had the mythical nine lives of cats to read all the books we would like? Or is it that cats seem to represent the all-knowing creatures we are tempted to think we can become through our books?

Perhaps it is much simpler. Somehow the presence of a cat wandering the shelves or perched atop a stack of books makes these stores seem a homier, more welcome place. That’s the impression we had at one of our favorite book haunts of the past, Twice-Loved Books, an indie used book store that occupied a former homes in Youngstown, Ohio. The store is no longer. But the memories of wandering the rooms with the store cat remain. The cat just added to the whole feel of the store as a place for an unhurried browse.

I hope the bookstore cat indeed has nine lives, because it will mean the stores it inhabits will as well. I’d love to hear about your favorite bookstore cat!